Baldwin County educators lock doors after self-proclaimed 'prophetess' threatens to become 'martyr'

Glynis Bethel: Self-proclaimed "prophetess" who lived for years in Loxley, Alabama, reportedly left threatening voicemail message with Baldwin County deputies.

BAY MINETTE, Alabama -- Baldwin County school officials locked their doors Thursday as a precaution after evangelical preacher Glynis Bethel left a voicemail with Baldwin County sheriff’s deputies threatening that she was armed with a gun and was ready to be a martyr.

“It’s certainly not the first time we’ve heard this kind of thing from her,” said Maj. Anthony Lowery, Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office spokesman. Deputies received the voicemail Thursday morning, he said.

Bethel, 50, a self-proclaimed “prophetess” who lived for years in Loxley with her husband and children, was thought have moved to Nashville, Tenn., with her family recently. Lowery said it was unclear Thursday whether she has returned.

“We haven’t seen her. She may well still be in Nashville,” he said. “There were no specifics, no place or date or time in the message. There was also a lot of inflammatory language. It was really just more of the same from her.”

The Press-Register’s efforts to contact Bethel were unsuccessful Thursday.

Terry Wilhite, a Baldwin County schools spokesman, said officials on Thursday “locked exterior doors at all Board of Education facilities as a precautionary measure. We are off tomorrow.”

For the past decade, Orlando and Glynis Bethel gained local media attention from time to time through their antics and through constant legal battles with the Baldwin County Board of Education and other governmental and business organizations.

Since moving to Nashville late last year, Glynis Bethel has continued to seek attention to her “evangelism.”

In January, she tried to register her children to attend public schools in Brentwood, an affluent suburb of Nashville, claiming that her family is homeless. Her group soon held protests outside of Brentwood High School.

Also in January, she filed a federal lawsuit
against Mountain Brook City Schools, claiming that her 3 children were denied registration
to the schools there as homeless students. The 22-page suit, which
claimed the school board violated the family's civil rights, was tossed by a federal judge.

Last month in Tennessee, Bethel was tackled by a group of police officers and charged with assault after spraying mace in the face of one of the officers. She and a group of others had been preaching publicly on a downtown sidewalk.

According to a search of public records, the couple’s home address remains in Loxley.